Salagubang

Sheryl Yap’s paper, Checklist of the Metapocyrtus Complex (Curculionidae: Entiminae: Pachyrrhynchini) of the Philippines, published in Asia Life Sciences [17(2):240-260, 2008], surveys the existing species of the genus culled from literature and is an important step in the study of this long understudied genus. The checklist includes 214 species of the genus Metapocyrtus as well as 6 and 2 species of the associated genera, Homalocyrtus and Proapocyrtus. The last two were raised to genus status in Yap & Gapud, 2007.

When broken down:

• Genus Metapocyrtus (214 species, 12 subspecies, 18varieties)
  • Subgenus Artapocyrtus (17 species)
  • Subgenus Dolichocephalocyrtus (21 species)
  • Subgenus Metapocyrtus (85 species)
  • Subgenus Orthocyrtus (31 species)
  • Subgenus Sclerocyrtus (4 species)
  • Subgenus Sphenomorphoidea (10 species)
  • Subgenus Trachycyrtus (46 species)
• Genus Homalocyrtus (6 species)
• Genus Proapocyrtus (2 species)

Looking over the checklist, I noticed that new species were last described by Schultze and Heller in 1934 and no other additional descriptions were made. This just shows that there is really a need to study this interesting group of the Pachyrrhynchini considering that there are still lots of undescribed species out there.

Note: Sheryl Yap is a University Extension Specialist of the Museum of Natural History at the University of the Philippines Los Baños College.